


The Good, the Bad, and the Bestial - Caper the Third: The Cave of Time

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: LooNEY_DAC's SSSS AUs [3]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Multi-AU pile-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 10:10:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 10,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8663494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	1. Towards the Cave of Time

The Darkness had lain over this place for untold years, waiting, watching, and planning. The Darkness was patient that way.

The march of the eons had paraded before the Darkness once, a vast, glittering tapestry of time bathed in beautiful showers of light that mocked the Darkness. Now, the Darkness would smother that tapestry, snuffing away light wherever it was to be found.

All was nearly in place now: the Man in the Black Hat; the Children of Darkness; the Unseen Inferno; and the Hopeless Distraction. The only way that anything could go awry, in fact, the key to defeating the Darkness, would soon be ensnared and engulfed in a Tar Baby of their own making.

It would all start with five simple words...

*

“THERE! NOW I SEE IT!”

“What do you see?” Sigrun’s voice was hushed.

“I see... I see a dark man crossing our path like a black cat to bring ruin to us. I see you and he have a past that drives him to come after us until he’s killed you. I see...”

Reynir was quiet for some time, mouth agape in amazement, until Sigrun poured out another shot for him. The sound jolted him back into speech.

“I see a cave that we must enter. I see he wants us to, and’ll help us get in that cave, but we must enter it anyway. I see past, present and future colliding and ricocheting like the balls on a billiard table...” Reynir stood, picking the whiskey bottle up and taking a swig directly from it. “I see us, and us, and us again, echoed down through the ages over and over. I see us getting through it with flying colors and a big brass band besides. Don’t worry, Lalli; it’ll all work out.”

*

The Man in the Black Hat walked up to where the prison commandant lay staked out for the wolves. The prison itself burned behind him, turning the noontime light a sickly orange with the billows of smoke that poured from it. Gathered around were the Man in the Black Hat’s enforcers, freshly back from burying the rest of the prison staff that they’d executed earlier.

The ex-commandant was either asleep or faking it; either way, his eyes flew open when the Man in the Black Hat kicked him in his side viciously.

“I’ve changed my mind.” The words were calculated to raise the doomed man’s hopes, but the hard expression on the Man in the Black Hat’s face belied that hope. He let the statement hang in the silence for a long moment before continuing, “Staking you out for the wolves is fine if you’re hunting wolves, but for what I’m hunting, you’re worthless. You failed to hold them; you’d fail as bait for them. The only thing you’re good for,” one of the Man in the Black Hat’s henchmen uncorked a large jug and handed it to his boss, “is to show how I deal with failures.”

The ex-commandant began to struggle wildly against the ropes binding him.

The Man in the Black Hat poured the oil over his victim, taking care to avoid where the ropes were attached, until the helpless man was quite soaked, then lit a thin cigarillo, and puffed away at it a few times. Then, he tossed the match.

*

“So, we’re heading for this cave in the middle of the Badlands so we can have it out with some guy from your past.” Mikkel’s voice still kept its wonted calm as he made the statement.

“Yep. And once we do, we’ll have one _fewer_ enemy out there. Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

Mikkel ignored the jab. “do you know who this man is?”

Sigrun’s face hardened. “Yep. Only one guy would be after me like this.”

“Who is he?”

Sheepish amusement twisted Sigrun’s face. “Well, we were never really on a first-name basis, if you understand, and so I never did get to know his right name. Most folk just call him the Man in the Black Hat, like he was a character out of one of those dime-store pulps.”

“I suppose it would be to much to ask for him to _act_ as foolish as those villains do.”

“Foolish, no.” Sigrun paused significantly. “Evil, yes.”

*

The hired gun slowly approached the Man in the Black Hat. Once his master acknowledged him, he reported, “They’re heading into the trap now.”

The Man in the Black Hat smiled. “Then we’d better be off ourselves.” He looked back. “Well, he made a better torch then he did a commandant.”

The hired gun declined to look.

“Time to ride for the Cave,” the Man in the Black Hat said, mounting his horse...


	2. Spelunker’s Triskadekaphobia

Not without regret, they parted ways with their wagon at the mouth of the cave, Reynir leading their horses over to where several others were hitched. “Ah, it’ll be here for us when we get back,” Sigrun predicted confidently. The others, save Reynir, were far less sanguine about the prospect of their return, but didn’t say so.

They were not alone, of course. The fact of other horses being hitched outside the cave merely confirmed what Lalli already knew from traces here and there: perhaps two dozen or more men awaited them inside the cave. Well, they’d faced worse before.

*

Battling in a cave is easier and harder than one might think, unless one paused to consider the various factors involved in making it so.

As to the harder: if you use any form of gunpowder, not only do you risk bringing the roof down, but you deafen yourself and foul the air. Besides, few caves afford the opportunity for anything but up-close-and-personal work, so guns lose their chief advantage. This was why Sigrun had Emil leave his kit behind, making sure he and Lalli had Bowie knives like hers ready for action.

As to the easier, on the other hand, snares, traps and ambuscades are nearly childishly simple in such surroundings, assuming you have a good route of retreat and sufficient time to prepare. Fortunately, between Lalli’s sharp eyes and Sigrun’s nose for danger, the intrepid band evaded all such in their path, until they were just behind the Man in the Black Hat and his retinue of thugs.

The brawl that followed was ugly in many ways. Suffice it to say that the Man in the Black Hat lost more than a dozen men, but they held the six opposing them back more than long enough for the Man in the Black Hat himself to escape with his own handful (or so) of followers, including the hired gun.

*

Eventually, they were all cleaned up and ready to pursue the Man in the Black Hat, but a new problem arose after they had made their way down the tunnel. The way ahead split into seven or eight passages (assuming one or more didn’t join back up), and there was no telling which one the Man in the Black Hat had used.

“Great,” Sigrun said to no one in particular. “What do we do now?”

“We choose,” Reynir said in a deep, portentous voice, his sudden speech and its unwonted manner startling the others.

Sigrun turned, ready to give a sarcastic reply, but the look on Reynir’s face stopped her. “Go on,” she said instead.

“We must choose which path to take, but this choice is more than it seems. The windings of the Cave may take us very far afield, but ever we shall return, whether in triumph or defeat.” Reynir paused, then continued in a more normal voice, “Oh, and the Man in the Black Hat has kind of a big head start on us, so we need to get a move on.”

“Ya _think?”_ Now Sigrun felt confident enough to essay a snipe or two. “Let’s go, then, unless your boots have taken root.” Picking a path more or less at random, she set off briskly, the others swiftly following.

*

The Man in the Black Hat stepped out into the bright sunlight, the hired gun and a few others close behind. Yes, this would do nicely as their first stop. “Do any of you still have your charges?” the Man in the Black Hat called.

The pause that followed the question gave the hired gun hope, which died as soon as one of the others said, “I have mine, right here and unspoiled.” The hired gun felt his stomach twist at the thought of what _they_ were and what _they_ could do even as several others echoed the first.

The Man in the Black Hat smiled horrifically. Pointing at the first speaker, he said, “Then turn the Beast loose, and let the Rash descend upon this place like a nightmare.”

*

Well, this path had certainly gone down the drain. Literally so, as they emerged into a series of most disgusting drain tunnels. By dumb luck, they eventually climbed out and onto a dimly lit and apparently ill-traveled city street by a ramshackle place bearing the name “Andersen’s Joint”. Though the night was obviously well advanced, they could hear the sound of revelry inside.

“Might as well see what’s what,” Lalli said, opening the door.

They had barely stepped inside before Taru Walks-the-World--Hollola according to her name-tag--accosted them. “Where on earth have you been? Trond’s furious--you need to get on stage as soon as you can!” With these and many other words, she ushered them back to the minuscule prep area behind the stage.

Doc Mikkel addressed Sigrun. “We need the low-down on what’s what, or we’re sunk.”

Sigrun smirked. “What, you think any of these high-falutin’ city dudes are going to have any clue about what’s going on?”

_“I_ might, if you’ll listen.” The speaker, a small and very old woman, stepped forward from where she had stood unnoticed in the doorway. With a shock, the others recognized her as Tuuri, a Tuuri grown ancient before their eyes. “After all, that’s why I’m here...”


	3. Explicated Implications

“Look,” the inexplicably ancient version of Tuuri that stood before them said, “I know you all either have or are about to have a few million questions all trying to get out at once, but none of us have a whole lot of time here, so if you’ll just let me say my piece--” She broke off abruptly.

Less than half a second later, Sigrun burst out with, “Look, how do we know this isn’t a trick?” The Elder Tuuri spoke the words along with her, so Sigrun (and the Elder Tuuri) snapped out, “Chrysanthemum! Sarsaparilla!” Then she paused, and remarked, “Thunderation!”

“I am Tuuri Face- _Still_ -Like-Baby, and I walked among you many winters ago.” She certainly had their attention. “Now that that’s done, there’s a lot I need to tell you guys, but not much time left. I’ll get into that in a bit.

“Where we are, right here, is Malmö, a city in Sweden, and the year is 1936.” Before the others could voice their objections or astonishment, the Elder Tuuri raised her hand and continued, “Reynir told us what he Saw: a ‘cave we must enter’, with ‘past, present and future colliding and ricocheting like the balls on a billiard table’, and ‘us, and us, and us again, echoed down through the ages over and over’. This is how that all plays out--the different cave branches lead to different times and places, not all of which are as welcoming or peaceful as this one is. In fact, in most of them, you’ll be fighting the Man in the Black Hat and his henchmen. Enjoy the breaks when you get them, because you’re about to get a glimpse of Armageddon.”

The Elder Tuuri sighed. “I’d say more-- _reams_ more--but Taru, who thinks you’re the house band, the ‘Malmö Musikers’, is about to try to bustle you onstage. Don’t worry; you’ll be able to fake it well enough. Oh, and at least here, y’all are speaking the local lingo without realizing it.”

Sure enough, Taru bustled in, fretting, “Come on, snap it up, guys! Quit horsing around and get on stage! Everything’s ready for you!” She began efficiently herding them out the door.

As they left, the Elder Tuuri called out, “Guys! One more thing!” When they turned back to look at her, she grinned and told them, “As to how I got here--I _flew!_ I took a beautiful silver aeroplane across the Atlantic, like Lindbergh!” She grinned a bit more, and finished, “That was it.”

*

Amazingly enough, the six of them actually performed creditably for the hour or so that they were onstage. When they went back to the cranny backstage for their first break, they found their counterparts waiting for them.

“Thanks, guys,” the other Sigrun told them, “but we’ll take it from here.” She and the rest of her bandmates were disheveled and strained-looking, but the Westerners forbore to ask what had kept them.

The Western Sigrun did, however, think to ask, “Is there a back way for us to sneak out of?”

“Some goons are watching it,” the other Sigrun said. “They’re waiting for us, in fact. You might need to shoot your way out, if it comes to it.”

The Western Sigrun pretended to think it over. “Go back onstage or blast our way back home--what do you guys think?”

All six Westerners chorused, “Blast ‘em,” even Doc Mikkel.

*

In the end, there wasn’t an actual fight. The goons were looking for six frightened musicians; when confronted with six frontier-hard gunslingers, they ran for their lives without a single shot being fired.

“Yellow dogs,” Sigrun spat derisively.

“City rats,” Emil pointed out. “Bully-boys used to roughing up folk who never held a gun in their lives.”

“Vultures,” Lalli agreed.

“Like the Arapaho, just more yellow,” Tuuri said.

“I don’t know,” Doc Mikkel mused. “If they come back with friends, they might not be so easily run off again.”

“I took care of that,” Reynir told them. “I knew what to tell ’em to keep ‘em from bothering our lookalikes back there. It was part of what I Saw.” He looked around again. “But we still oughta go now, or we’ll be too late.”

“The Man in the Black Hat?” Sigrun guessed.

“He’s already on the move, so we might be too late for somebody else already.” And with that, Reynir dropped back into the drains that had led them there...


	4. The Hopeless Distraction

_After Reynir Saw in a Vision that the sadistic and vicious Man in the Black Hat was going into the mysterious Cave of Time, intent upon unleashing_ the Rash _onto the unprepared world, the Band of Six (and their cat) followed him into its space-and-time-bending depths!_

_A battle ensued, the Man in the Black Hat fled deeper into the Cave of Time, and when the Band of Six tried chasing after him, they wound up almost seventy years and five thousand miles away from where they began!_

_Now, the Band must retrace their steps in a desperate attempt to stop the Man in the Black Hat before he can unleash untold death, destruction and suffering upon the globe..._

Bornholm, Denmark  
1353

The hut stood at the edge of the village, to all appearances just another hovel of stick and mud, the thatched roof moldy and otherwise unkempt, but on this day, it was the focus of much consternation.

The masked deputation had tried knocking, as they knew that the inhabitants hadn’t been seen to leave the place for nearly a week, but when knocking failed, they forced the door and went in.

Almost at a run, the men came back out, retiring to a nearby hedge that they might pull their masks off and retch away from the hut’s foul air. As soon as the leader could speak, he declared, “We shall have to burn it down, lest its filth contaminate the rest of the village.”

*

“He’s already been here,” Lalli announced as they stepped out of the Cave. A forest rose around them, thick and wild, but a clear path ran before them.

“Been, gone, and left us a mess to clean up if we can,” Reynir agreed, his voice muffled by the layers of cloth newly covering his face, while he helped Tuuri similarly swathe herself.

“Is it something I can shoot?” Sigrun asked.

“I hope not,” Reynir said with a shudder. “More likely, it’s something Emil needs to burn.” Which of course perked the fire-bug up considerably.

“Whatever it is, it won’t wait for us,” Lalli said. “We need to get a move on.” He set off down the path.

*

The first attack came a few steps down the trail. Lalli suddenly flung himself forward to dodge the _thing_ -sent-straight-from-the- _Devil_ -himself, relying on those behind to actually kill it, which Sigrun and Emil did, shooting it over and over until they were sure it was dead.

“Anyone else wishing for a gatling gun?” Sigrun asked ruefully.

“We may need to burn this whole place down,” Reynir observed.

“How many more like that are there out there?” Emil asked as he reloaded.

“Maybe too many,” Lalli said grimly.

*

The first village they came to was deserted and dead. Sigrun went into one of the houses _very_ briefly, and emerged looking much as she had when she’d found the smallpox victims.

Before they left (and they certainly didn’t linger), they set the whole place to the torch, which flushed out quite a few little horrors they had to shoot.

The next village was walled up tight and incredibly paranoid, and no wonder: they’d been fighting these things off for almost a month now, and Sigrun’s little band were the only travelers to come from the Deadly Woods unscathed in all that time.

It took quite some time to explain what had happened, and what needed to be done, but they eventually got the message across, in somewhat scrambled form.

*

_From_ The Completely, Totally, Utterly True History of Bornholm, _by Uhyrlige Løgner_

[...] While Bornholm’s isolation warded us from the terrors of the Plague for a long time, that scourge of Europe finally reached our shores in the summer of 1353. A concerted campaign of slash-and-burn cleansed our island over the course of the fall, but at great cost in lives and property [...]


	5. The Unseen Inferno

War: the winnowing of nations; the crucible of souls. War brought men together that they might rend each other to pieces.

War had always been the breeding ground of plague. Until the mid-20th Century, more deaths were always brought about by sepsis and plague than by the efforts of the enemy.

War was thus the perfect place to release a plague, and where better to release the ultimate plague than the ultimate war?

*  
London, England  
1 August, 1808

The man from the Foreign Office studied the massive Dane standing before him with such seeming placidity, his own doubts buried beneath a well-honed mask of aplomb. Hiring soldiers of fortune (against which practice Signor Machiavelli and others had so much to say) at all, and especially when these men of infamously loose morals and looser behavior were composed in large part of men from nations with which the Empire was formally at war, most decidedly went against the grain.

“I was expecting to meet with your captain,” the Foreign Office man remonstrated.

Mikkel almost smiled at that. “Oh, our captain is not one to be summoned by some desk-ridden monkey, however grand his desk may be, and this policy has delivered not merely the captain but our entire group from well-planned traps dressed up as job offers. You will hand me the details of our mission or there will be no mission.”

“Oh, devil take your impudence, man!” The Foreign Office man took a few deep breaths in order to restore his equanimity. “I must applaud your captain’s policy, though it would seem unwise to send such an undiplomatic emissary.”

Mikkel took the proffered envelope. “As to that, the simplest explanation is also the truth: I’m the only one who speaks English.”

*

Of course, Mikkel was lying. Tuuri had the diplo-speak of the orders sussed within a few minutes of study. “They want us to help the Spaniards in their uprisings against the French.”

“How much do they want our aid?” Sigrun asked with faux off-handedness. Of course, the other four were just as seemingly casual yet intent on the answer.

“Around 30,000 sterling, plus equipment and arms, it looks like,” Tuuri replied. “Though I think some of that’s meant to pay the Spaniards, too.”

“Eh, it’ll do.” And so the rest agreed.

*  
Somewhere in Galicia, Spain  
10 December, 1808

Starlight greeted the Western Six as they stepped out from the mouth of the Cave.

“Sooooo... where were we again, Tuuri?” Silence. “Mikkel?” More silence. “Does _anyone_ have even the _least_ clue as to where and when we’ve got to?”

“I see Orion,” Emil remarked.

“Whoop-de-doo.”

“You can only see Orion well during winter; by where it’s at in the sky, we’re still in the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s late fall-ish. Maybe December? But we’re north of the equator, at any rate.”

“And we’re finally in the lead,” Reynir added. “The Man in the Black Hat hasn’t reached here yet so we just have to stake this place out and we’ll get him.”

This, of course, was when the ambush happened.

*

“Why do I always end up on corpse disposal duty?” Emil asked in frustration. “We never burn ‘em, so why me?”

Sigrun shrugged. “You keep stumbling into the best dump sites.” She turned to Tuuri. “Any idea who they were yet?”

“All these papers are in _French,_ and that’s one of my worst languages,” Tuuri explained. “It doesn’t help that they’re in _bad_ French, either. From what I _can_ make out, though, I think we’re somewhere in Spain, somewhere around 1808-ish, and there’s a war on.”

Mikkel groaned.

“What’s up?”

“There’s more like five wars going on, all muddled together under that jerk Napoleon Bonaparte. Wonderful. Only thing worse would be back in Virginny in the spring of ’65.”

Sigrun was looking decidedly happier at the implied prospects for carnage as Mikkel made his little speech.

“They might have thought that we’re Brits.” Everyone looked at Lalli, who continued, “Might be a problem in future. Brits keep sticking their noses in and making bad stuff worse, so keep getting everybody ticked off at ‘em.”

Lalli looked significantly at Tuuri, who mused, “We speak English, so they might think we’re Brits and hold us to account for whatever Brit idiocy’s in the wind. Great.”

“Are they likely to believe we’re ‘Yanquis’?” Sigrun asked.

“Only if they haven’t met us.”

The answer, delivered in Mikkel’s trademark dry drawl, startled them, especially Mikkel, who hadn’t said it. Heads and not a few six-guns turned in the direction the remark had come from...


	6. Shaking Off the Tar Baby

Somewhere in Galicia, Spain  
11 December, 1808

Mikkel poleaxed was certainly a sight to see, and the fact of _two_ poleaxed Mikkels staring at each other with identical expressions only amplified that. The others were content to gaze on at the sight, but Reynir had to speak.

“So, what’s up, Doc Mikkel? Why are you strolling about in the dark, alone?”

The question seemed to bring the interloping doppelgänger to life again. He started, opened his mouth, reconsidered, and finally decided what to divulge to these strange copies of his comrades.

They had been conducting a raid against the French and their local hirelings when Tuuri, through an awful misfortune, had been stabbed by a rusty bayonet. Sigrun had dispatched its wielder almost casually, but the damage had been done, and she obviously blamed herself. Since then, their activities had been more and more curtailed, as the French brought more and more troops into Spain to face their enemies.

Things got worse. Inevitably, it seemed, their Tuuri’s wound had turned septic, and their Mikkel, though skilled and smart, was powerless to help her. It was only a matter of time before the Eide Traveling Players were short one member.

Desperate, but too self-contained to show it and upset the Captain, Mikkel had gone off in search of native herbs that might assist him. He hadn’t held out much hope.

Of course, when he’d heard the familiar voices from this little canyon, Mikkel had naturally assumed that his friends were out looking for him, and rejoined them, as he’d thought, with a bit of light banter.

“Mikkel,” a very tentative Tuuri said, “I might know how to help her, if you’ll let me.”

*

Tuuri Face-Like-Baby had not learned much from the community’s Eldest Midwife, but she _had_ picked up on a few, a very few, important bits of the Old Lore.

The Eldest Midwife had impressed the importance of cleaning wounds so sepsis couldn’t set in, but she’d also vouchsafed a somewhat risky way to drive sepsis out if it _did_ get a foothold. Sometimes it killed rather than cured, but sepsis was a death sentence anyway, so most sufferers chose to chance it, if they were still coherent enough to make the choice.

Tuuri Hotakainen was _not_ coherent enough to make a choice. Tuuri Face-Like-Baby looked at her erstwhile twin doubtfully, then applied the poultice.

*

The poultice worked, and Tuuri was on the mend. Sigrun, however, was not. She’d taken Tuuri’s plight far more to heart than she’d let on to anyone else, letting the notion of her own responsibility in the matter eat at her like a starveling dog, slowly eroding her wonted self-assurance.

The two Emils had put their heads together to mix up something “special” (dangerous, flammable, explosive, or all three) for the next venture: a raid on a local concentration of French troops, just to stir things up a little.

“I don’t think we can do this without your help,” one Sigrun confessed to the other.

“Sure you can,” the Western Sigrun replied with her usual breezy confidence. “You’re _Sigrun Eide,_ head of the Eide Traveling Players, and that’s all the help you need.”

The other Sigrun smiled back at her, drew herself up, took in a long, slow breath, and let it out just as slowly. “OK. Time to do this.”

*

The Westerners were back in the canyon when the Man in the Black Hat stepped out from the Cave, his flunkies surrounding him and preventing even Lalli from getting a clear shot. Sigrun waited until the knot of men had inched a good piece away from the Cave to bring the storm down upon them.

The Man in the Black Hat dropped to the ground at the first shots. He was untouched, and meant to stay that way. “Loose the Beasts!” he snarled, wriggling his way back to the Cave as his henchmen rushed to do his bidding.

As soon as the Man in the Black Hat gave his order, his opponents began pouring as much lead as they could on his flunkies. They all remembered what they’d seen on Bornholm, and they weren’t about to let that happen here!

With his dying breath, the last flunky opened the cage nearest him, allowing the Beast within to spring forth...


	7. Sacrifice of Emil’s

The Man in the Black Hat’s flunkies had all fallen save one by the time their master reached the shelter of the Cave’s mouth. With a curse, he began firing back at his opponents, a wild fusillade that forced the Westerners back into cover just long enough for his final minion to carry out his orders.

Emil watched the flunky fumble with the latch from his vantage point behind a rock, knowing that if he moved to stop the flunky, the Man in the Black Hat would gun him down like a dog, but knowing also the horrific consequences if the flunky succeeded. Emil’s internal debate paralyzed him just long enough for the flunky to fling the cage open with a dying spasm.

There was no choice now. Emil stood, silhouetted perfectly against the night, and threw his Incendiary Delight. For a few endless seconds, the bottle hurtled through the air, flying true to Emil’s aim, and finally smashed upon the newly freed Beast.

Something hit Emil’s shoulder; it was the last thing he felt for some time. He certainly never felt the bullet that grazed his neck, nor the one that pierced his ear. But Emil was beyond caring: his success was all that mattered.

Bright fire smothered the abomination, and it screamed in fury and in pain, but, try as it might, it could no more escape those cleansing flames than it could fly. The horrid scent of burning Beast flooded the air already rent with the Beast’s hideous shrieks, until it burned away.

Lalli watched the Beast burn, hearing also how the Man in the Black Hat cursed them from his hidey-hole. A few shots from Sigrun finally convinced that fiend to flee, though, and the others could break cover at last. Lalli took the opportunity to run over to where he’d seen Emil fall.

Emil was unconscious, and no wonder. A bright red blotch was spreading over Emil’s waistcoat and shirt from his shoulder wound.

*

Between the gunshot wounds and a worrisome (yet thankfully brief) fever, it took Emil three days before he could get out of bed, and the evening he did, Sigrun held a council of war.

“We can’t wait, or the Man in the Black Hat will get clean away.” Sigrun made the statement with a quiet firmness that almost had the others pitying the Man in the Black Hat, for they knew what it signified. “Now that the crisis is past, we can let Emil heal up here while we take care of that filth.”

“I’ll be OK,” Emil said gamely. “Besides, I can use the time to mix up some more munitions for us and our counterparts.”

Tuuri nodded, as did Mikkel; Lalli began to bristle and glare at Sigrun for _daring_ to suggest they leave Emil behind; and Reynir...

“We need Emil more than speed,” Reynir said definitively, “or even vengeance.” He threw Sigrun a significant look. “Our next stop’s where everything changes.”

Something in his voice convinced even Sigrun. They would wait for Emil to heal enough that he could accompany them.

*  
Malmö, Sweden  
Year 3, Day 26  
2257L

_“Again_ with the sewers?” Sigrun complained.

“Home sweet home,” Emil retorted. “At least the aroma isn’t so bad this time.”

“You’re more right than you know,” Mikkel rumbled. “Look.” On one of the walls was a faded mark, two M’s in a circle. “I put that mark there the last time we were here, before we played at the jazz club.”

“So we’re in Sweden again,” Sigrun mused. “This Cave sure likes Europe, don’t it?”

“Something’s wrong,” Lalli said. “You’re right, Emil: it doesn’t smell so bad as it should, and that’s not good.”

Tuuri frowned. “Yeah, this is how sewers smell when they haven’t been used for a while.”

“So the city up there’s been abandoned?” Emil asked. “Why on earth--?”

The realization hit all six of them at once: they were in a plague town, and what other plague had hounded them so far?

Suddenly, the Westerners found themselves preternaturally aware of every little noise around them. “I think we should go up,” Emil said, and they did...


	8. The Survivors

Malmö, Sweden  
Year 3, Day 27  
0949L

Sigrun Eide leaped nimbly over the flailing tentacle trying to disembowel her and stabbed through another of the Giant’s brains. This was the most massive Giant she’d taken on in the three years since the Outbreak, but if it wanted to take out her crew, it would have to go through her first!

Faster than anyone could have reacted, more tentacles sprang their trap, snapping Sigrun’s knife arm like a twig. The Giant screamed in demonic triumph at Sigrun from at least twenty more mouths, and she knew, with bleak certainty, that she was about to die.

Of course, she didn’t plan on making it _easy_.

Right as the Giant was about to strike, a Molotov Cocktail hit its trunk, flames shooting along its fetid, hideous bulk. As Sigrun turned to see who her rescuer was--probably Emil, but he was supposed to be watching the _south_ end, so she’d have to remonstrate with him for leaving his post--she heard her own voice cackle gleefully, “Bullseye, Goldilocks!”

But Sigrun hadn’t said that. She finished turning--and nearly fell over at the sight of the six figures approaching her in garb straight out of those John Wayne movies Mikkel, Onni and Emil loved so much, for not only did they include Tuuri, Reynir, Lalli--Lalli, whose leg she’d helped set just yesterday!--Mikkel and Emil, but another Sigrun walked with them as well.

It was at this point that the shock of her broken arm combined with the shock of seeing the doubles and knocked Sigrun out, though not easily. Characteristically, she struggled against her impending black-out, but eventually succumbed.

*

“It looks like a cat,” Lalli Ghost-of-Forest commented dryly. So it did, albeit a bit more grungily than when Lalli Hotakainen had made the same observation three years earlier.

Mobility was the key to surviving in the city, and there had been not a few running (well, crawling really, but you get the point) battles over those three years. Sigrun and Emil had scrounged together a meager assortment of weaponry for those running battles, but their nights were still spent under whatever cover they could suss out, most of the crew sleeping with one eye open against the possibility of the grosslings (as they called the monsters) sussing them out.

Of course, the Westerners knew none of this; all they knew was that contemporary Sigrun’s tracks led back here, so here they had carried her unconscious form. “OY!” the Western Sigrun shouted.

Before she could say anything else, Emil popped out from behind them and, putting his finger to his lips in the universal “hush!” signal, motioned with the gun he carried for them to move to the vehicle.

When they reached the door, Emil went up to it and drew his fingers along it in a specific pattern of scratches, whereupon Mikkel opened the door from inside.

“These guys found Sigrun hurt and brought her back here,” Emil said. Unfortunately, he spoke in Swedish, which was about as intelligible to most of the Westerners as Greek.

_Most_ of the Westerners couldn’t understand what contemporary Mikkel’s reply was. Western Mikkel, on the other hand, spoke bad and badly accented Danish, and so heard his counterpart tell Emil, “You all need to be decontaminated, you know.”

“Do we have extra masks for those two?” Emil asked, gesturing at Reynir and Tuuri. “I mean, assuming this isn’t just some weird dream I’m having.”

“We all wish,” Mikkel said gently. Then, “I think we have a few more spares, assuming they haven’t already been infected.”

“They haven’t,” the Western Mikkel interjected. “They’ve had their faces covered since we came out of the sewers.”

Emil turned to his Mikkel with a grin and said, “Wow. He speaks Danish badly enough that I understand him better than you.”

*

The decontamination process was pretty quick; three years of practice had honed it to a science. Tending to Sigrun’s arm, however, was a bigger problem, even with two Mikkels at work.

Tuuri and Lalli Hotakainen were having a desultory conversation in Finnish when Tuuri Face-Like-Baby and Lalli Ghost-of-Forest came up to them. Fortunately, the Hotakainens also spoke enough English for the foursome to converse.

“Mostly, we’ve been doing okay, so far,” Tuuri Hotakainen concluded. “Except for my brother, Onni, over there.” She gestured at a large form huddled miserably beneath a blanket under a bunk at the back of the vehicle. “About a year ago, he started asking when we were going home, and we realized that his mind had... snapped under the pressure.”

At the lost look in Onni’s eyes, bright burning anger sprang to life in Lalli Ghost-of-Forest...


	9. Killer Cures Kill or Cure

Lalli Ghost-of-Forest looked away from the sad figure of Onni Hotakainen, helpless rage churning his insides. His eyes lighted upon a jug of a vividly emerald liquid that almost seemed to shine back at him. The vibrant shimmer held his gaze long enough for Tuuri Hotakainen to notice.

“That’s ‘the Cure’, or what we have left of it,” she said, a mocking note in her voice as she named it. “Right at the end, some doctors in Denmark were trying this out, and it stopped the Illness from progressing, but by putting the patients into a coma. We tried it a few times ourselves, but it only works to kill trolls and disinfect their goop.”

As she had spoken, Lalli Ghost-of-Forest had moved in for a closer look. Power was surging in him, compelling him to gather each and every stirring rod near the jug and slide them into the green liquid one by one.

“What on earth are you doing, Lalli?” Tuuri Face-Like-Baby asked in bewilderment.

“What needs to be done,” their Reynir answered portentously for Lalli.

Lalli drew the rods around in the jug, and as he stirred, he softly sang...

*

“So any batch made in that jug will work as a vaccine or cure now?” Contemporary Mikkel was incredulous, and most of his fellows with him. All thirteen of them were present for this announcement, though Onni still had that unseeing look in his eyes, remaining silent throughout.

“If it’s that stuff and either put into the jug or stirred by one of the rods,” Reynir clarified while Lalli kept silent. “The world needs more than can be made from one jug.”

“If we test it for you, would you trust it then?” the Western Sigrun asked.

“There _is_ the matter of finding subjects to test it on,” Emil Västerström pointed out. Tuuri Hotakainen exchanged a smirk with contemporary Reynir.

“We’ll find some,” Emil Westbrook replied confidently.

“About three miles from here, living in a little fortlet,” the Western Reynir added.

“How did you know about _them?”_ contemporary Sigrun asked as sharply as she could through the painkillers.

“He Saw it. He gets Visions,” the Western Sigrun said in a tone that _dared_ anyone there to contradict her.

“Torbjörn and Siv are there,” the Western Reynir told Emil.

“My uncle and his wife?”

“And Siv just got infected. They’re putting her into quarantine right now, but it’s too late.”

Before Emil Västerström could launch himself at the deliverer of bad news, Lalli Ghost-of-Forest stepped between them, facing Emil, and said, “We can still get to her in time for the cure to work. It only gets difficult once the Rash has spread all over the body.”

“Emil,” Lalli Hotakainen said. “Trust them.”

*

The camp was the same kind of makeshift assemblage of two dozen or so random people and whatever they’d scrounged or salvaged that the contemporaries had seen off and on over the last three years; for example, they almost certainly had enough alcohol to pickle the lot of them but not a single fresh carrot. Not that either Sigrun had any great fondness for carrots, but they would stave off scurvy, at least.

Another thing that was becoming all too familiar was the silence, as though the merest whisper would bring down every last grossling in Malmö (or all of Sweden, at that) upon them.

And then there was the quarantine ward. Everyone there avoided going anywhere near it, or even looking at it.

Yes, fear lay heavily over the little camp, as it had over any group paranoid and lucky enough to have survived this long. That was what the dozen meant to change.

*

The refugees had let them dose the quarantine ward’s denizens willingly enough; the hard part had been waiting out the two weeks afterward.

Finally, though, the entire camp turned out to welcome the recently quarantined back into the fold. They were all still _extremely_ quiet about it, though.

That was when the bomb went off.

An entire section of the fortlet’s wall vanished with an explosion loud enough to wake, if not the dead, then at least every last grossling in Malmö. In the hole where the wall had been stood a man. The Man in the Black Hat.

“THERE WILL BE NO CURE!” he shouted. “IF I HAVE TO KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU, THERE WILL BE _NO **CURE**!!!!!”_

The Westerners sent a few shots his way, but he’d brought “friends”. They used the rest of the cure to bring down the five giants, and all of _both_ Emil’s arsenals bringing down the trolls.

“We need to take three of the rods and _run,”_ the Western Reynir said. “And you guys need to get out of the city.”

“Don’t worry,” contemporary Mikkel said. “We have a few tricks up our sleeves in case he comes back. We’ll be all right.”

*

“Time to play the bait,” the Western Sigrun said with a disturbing amount of relish, even for her, as they went back into the sewers...


	10. Wolves of the Sea

On the Orkanhullet Peninsula of St. Thomas Island  
1610

The torches flickered in the wind as the landing party made its way through the thick foliage. Emil and Lalli struggled under their shared load, while Mister Mikkel was infuriatingly at ease with his. Ahead, Sigrun led them along the trail to their dumping grounds.

This party was carrying over a third of the loot from the _Mariposa Reina,_ in their second such trip since Lalli had sighted the _Túnfiskurinn_ such a short time ago. Even Tuuri and Reynir had been loaded down and were struggling along at the rear of the procession.

Finally, they reached the dig site. Normally, such a haul would be squirreled into a dozen or more small holes, but with the threat of _Túnfiskurinn_ looming in the distance, they had no time for such luxuries.

As the loot disappeared under the dirt, Sigrun called Emil over to her. “I need you and Lalli to take the _Mariposa Reina_ out and...” As Emil listened, nodding occasionally, Sigrun laid out the gist of one of her signature Plans.

“Ah,” a familiar voice said in unfamiliarly bad Danish, “there you are.” Six oddly-garbed figures stepped into the circle of light from the torches, each a dead ringer for Sigrun and her trusted few.

Sigrun glanced down at her water-skin doubtfully. “Mikkel, you haven’t let anyone near the water, have you?”

“Even if I had, we all wouldn’t be seeing the same illusion,” Mister Mikkel replied.

“We’re not an illusion,” his double replied.

“Whatever they are, we don’t have time for them,” Emil reminded the Captain.

“Do you have time for _me?”_ The question was in Icelandic, but they all knew what it meant. From another part of the jungle, Ása Hardardóttir stepped forth, all alone.

_“Watch out! She’s Infected!”_ The shout, in English, came from the other Reynir. Of the pirates, only Sigrun, Mister Mikkel, Tuuri, and Ása understood him.

“As are half my crew,” Ása replied in the same language. “The rest are in thrall to this--this demon in human form!” She turned to Sigrun. “He wants you dead, which I was fine with, but he wants... _more_. I think he wants to turn this whole world into a charnel house of plague and death, and that I’m _not_ fine with. So, can we do a deal?”

“He wouldn’t just _happen_ to sport a wide-brimmed black hat, would he?” the other Sigrun asked.

Of course he did. Of _course_ he did.

*

They wound up using Sigrun’s original plan anyway, but with Ása helming the _Mariposa Reina._ Not that Emil minded; in fact, he preferred to have someone else holding the reins, as it were. That way, _he_ wasn’t to blame for whatever inevitably went wrong.

Besides, where else would you want an enemy beside right up front where you could keep an eye on them? For Sigrun wasn’t such a fool as to think Ása wasn’t playing her own deep game here.

The idea, of course, was to use the _Sea-lynx_ as bait, drawing _Túnfiskurinn’s_ attention until the _Mariposa Reina_ was upon her. Simple and like enough to work, as all of Sigrun’s plans seemed; also, it was unrepeatable, as Sigrun’s plans often were, as the foe would be alerted to what was coming.

This last was how Emil knew Captain Eide was planning something even more... _special_ than usual: she’d _never_ let a foe in on one of her plans like this were there not a twist to demonstrate her Most Bestness.

Emil looked over at Lalli, who was deceptively still. Only someone who knew him as Emil did would be able to tell that the slight Finn was tensed for action. This was good; Emil was pretty tense himself. The only thing for it now was to wait until it was time to spring the trap.

The timbers creaked and the waves crashed, but all else was still, as though the sea itself knew what was coming...


	11. The Children of Darkness

All was falling into place.

The Darkness had gathered itself into readiness as its Anointed worked its will.

Soon.

All that remained was to unleash its Children upon those fools still striving to thwart the Darkness and its inevitable victory, now closer than ever before.

Soon.

*

It all went off like clockwork. In fact, it almost went _too_ well; everyone kept looking out for traps that weren’t there, and tricks that weren’t being played. The only thing that was wrong with the whole thing was quite simple: after scouring the ship from top to bottom, they had to admit that the Man in the Black Hat had gone.

The Man in the Black Hat was nowhere to be found aboard the _Túnfiskurinn_. This was disturbing enough that Ása held off on her plans for turning on Sigrun  & co.

Lalli had retired to his crow’s-nest while the two captains worried over what should be done next, so _he_ was the one to give the alarm when the three vessels were confronted with the most unutterably horrible apparition any of them had ever seen.

A great rotting hulk with sails hanging ragged and limp rose up out of the water, borne by a whale on either side. Only the whales had _grown into_ the hulk’s timbers, and on its deck, gross and misshapen forms scurried about. In the rigging were pulsating tentacular growths knitting the whole obscene assembly together. At the prow, though, was a thoroughly human figure, bearing a bullhorn: the Man in the Black Hat.

“Ahoy the fleet,” his mocking voice hailed. “You’ve done well against my pawns, but now you face--THE KRAKEN!”

Before Emil could finish loading the “Everything-He’d-Ever-Seen-Work-on-a-Ship-Ever-and-then-Some” Specials the sight of the foe had inspired in him, it had slithered out of range, so they retired to the Captain’s cabin for war planning.

“There’s only one way to stop it,” the Western Reynir told them. “Sigrun has to dump the Cure on its very Heart and Core.”

Disbelief would be laughable at this point; their only option was to grab onto this basic scheme with both hands. “Where is the Heart to be found?” Sigrun asked.

“You’ll need to board that thing,” Mister Mikkel pointed out, as was his job, “and the whales might make it problematic.”

The Captain smiled a smile that almost had Emil pitying the Man in the Black Hat. “That won’t be a problem.”

*

The _Mariposa Reina_ under full sail made for the gap between the twin whale mouths protecting the hulk they’d absorbed, Tuuri at the helm. At the last possible moment before the fore-spars would have hit, Tuuri nudged the _Mariposa Reina_ a hair to port, slicing her keel along the length of the hulk so that the whale on that side was scraped away like a great and horrible barnacle.

Grapnels flew out to lash the two ships together, and the boarders sprung aboard the Kraken, Sigrun Eide, Captain of the _Sea-Lynx,_ at their fore, bearing as much of the Cure as she could.

Obscene appendages and free-roaming trolls whipped out to halt her, but before any could reach, four whirling dervishes swept them all aside. Two Lallis and two Emils raced around Sigrun as she hastened across the deck to the fo’c’s’le hatch, where the Kraken’s Heart was waiting.

Sigrun was not an inconsiderable fighter herself, but she couldn’t risk what she held of the Cure being wrested away from her in some otherwise minor skirmish.

Unfortunately, only she could go through the hatch, and the things that awaited her, while swiftly despatched, succeeded in stripping her of her weapons and the Cure, leaving her to face the Heart unarmed.

The Heart filled the fo’c’s’le to bursting, its repulsive grayish bulk pulsating like its tentacles aboveboard. It seemed to mock Sigrun as she stood before it.

In desperation, Sigrun stabbed out with the only remaining thing she held: one of the stirring rods. It plunged into that vast writhing mass with all the force she could give it, and there it lodged.

For a moment, nothing happened, but then, the Rod began to glow, dimly at first, but soon so bright as to hurt Sigrun’s eyes, and as it did, a wave of blue energy spilled out from it into the fetid monstrosity it pierced, slowly burning away the Rash-filth until only ashes remained.

“Well,” Sigrun said to herself, “that went better than expected.”

At that moment, the deck gave way beneath her as the Kraken began its death throes.

*

Well, _Túnfiskurinn_ was gone, off to try to pick off some of the Hanseatic trade as it came out of the Skaggarak, and good riddance. Ása had given Sigrun a nice bottle of wine as a parting gift, only _lightly_ seasoned with arsenic.

_Mariposa Reina_ had gone down with the Kraken, which would feature in many a bar-room tale after this.

The Man in the Black Hat had gone ashore after his Western foes, who were fixing to make their next stop his last...


	12. A Time to Stand

Year 90  
The Indre By, Copenhagen

Lalli Hotakainen was running through the snowy streets, not from fear, but by choice.

“...Saying I can’t do my job...” he grumbled as he raced on through the falling snow.

Finally, Lalli came back to that last crossing. A dark alleyway gaped back at him, but the other, seemingly better ways had proved impassable, so into this dark corridor they must go.

_“Howdy, Lalli.”_

Lalli stopped dead. That had been Mikkel’s voice, but Mikkel was back with the others, so it _couldn’t_ be Mikkel’s voice, but it _was_ Mikkel’s voice...

Mikkel stepped out from the darkness of the alley Lalli had been about to probe, only he was in some weird getup like Lalli had never seen before. What on earth--

Lalli stiffened in sudden understanding when another figure came forth. It was Lalli, but dressed in the same odd garb as the other Mikkel.

Fetches.

There was only one way to deal with fetches, and Lalli wasn’t sure he was strong enough at the moment to pull it off. But he had to: if the others fell to their fetches because they’d blithely followed him into this unforeseen peril, then it would be his fault all over again.

Lalli would not let this happen.

Lalli gathered his resolve and prepared to call upon his Luonto.

Something about the scout’s posture alerted Lalli Ghost-of-Forest to his intent. _“Lalli, no! We’re friends, not evil spirits!”_

As far as Lalli Hotakainen was concerned, Lalli Ghost-of-Forest might as well have been speaking Sanskrit. He bent down, placing one hand in the fresh snow.

Closing his eyes, Lalli Ghost-of-Forest reached back through the years, seeking one of his deepest memories: the chant his grandmother had sung to him as a swaddling babe. As soon as he caught the memory, he began to sing along.

Lalli Hotakainen froze. That melody, and especially those words could never come from some malicious spirit--so what were these two facing him?

_“What’s the hold-up?”_ Another double emerged, this one of Sigrun, again garbed similarly to the others.

_“Language troubles,”_ Mikkel replied. _“It looks like we spooked local Lalli, here, and our Lalli has been trying to sing him down.”_

_“I’ll get Tuuri out here. Maybe she can clear it up.”_

Behind Lalli Hotakainen, there came the familiar sound of the Felinopede grumbling its way down the street. Had they all been standing there that long?

Before any more gibberish could be tried by the newcomers, the vehicle came to a sudden stop behind Lalli Hotakainen as Tuuri Hotakainen noticed just what he was staring at.

“AHOY THE TANK,” Doc Mikkel bellowed in his best (still awful) Danish. “WE COME AS FRIENDS!”

*

After a long pow-wow fraught with suspicion on the locals’ part, the Westerners led their counterparts through Meat-Pod Central to the ruins of the Bastion of Amalienborg. This ruined city was tragic enough, but the evidences of the last-ditch heroism of what few survivors were left before they were wiped out gave Emil Westbrook a nasty knot in his stomach as he remembered their last stop in Malmö.

He had to admit, though, that the Bastion was well-nigh the perfect place to stand against the Man in the Black Hat and whatever minions he could muster. The barricades looked sound enough even now, and the coils of barbed wire and sandbags guarding the only unblocked gateway would still be effective enough obstacles in the event of an assault.

Hopefully, the locals had understood enough of Doc Mikkel’s broken Danish that they’d join the Westerners against the Man in the Black Hat, but after all they’d been through, Emil Westbrook was ready to take that filth on single-handed, if need be (though he knew he could count on his Captain and Lalli Ghost-of-Forest in any eventuality).

The two Lallis and the two Reynirs had gone into one of the buildings, which Doc Mikkel had told them was one of the places the prototype Cure had been tested--and failed. Reynir had said something about needing to get rid of the spooks that were left over, and so the foursome had gone.

While not desirous for them to mess the exorcism up, Emil hoped they’d do their best to hurry; night was falling, and if anything in this place was certain, it was that the Man in the Black Hat would strike in the dark of night. He always had.

Fortunately, the Captain and Emil had already cleared out the few live grosslings from Meat-Pod Central, so the Man in the Black Hat would find no aid there. There were almost certainly other such nests around nearby, though, so they couldn’t get too cocky.

In the meantime, however, the others were whipping up as much of the working Cure as they could, in anticipation of using it against whatever grosslings came their way. Of course, the two Emils were whipping up a bunch of incendiaries and explosives instead, but that was treated as right and natural, besides being useful.

The night gathered around the little vehicle sitting in the center of the abandoned palace, and the dozen inside it waited for the inevitable...


	13. A Stand in Time

The first sign of the attack was when the giant trying to climb over Frederik VIII’s Palace tripped the Cure trap they’d rigged against just that chance. It was amazing how much noise grosslings made as they died, presumably in order to bring down more of their hosts upon whatever had killed them, but this time, that was part of the plan.

Amalienborg had been designed and built as a quartet of palaces rather than as a fortification, but in the desperation of Year Zero, its old stones had been reinforced with sandbags and razor-wire to make it one of Copenhagen’s final bastions--a spot where Humanity had stood against the Rash to the bitter end. Neither plague nor grossling had overcome the defenses back then; only starvation had brought the end about.

Now, the bastion that had lain silent for so long again sheltered a rag-tag scrap of humanity against everything the Rash could throw at them--and again, it held. Grosslings trying to infiltrate palace or passage found themselves hopelessly entangled by razor-wire and doused with the Cure, not merely failing, but actively blocking other such attempts.

So it was that the Man in the Black Hat’s dread legions were forced into storming the one open path to their goal; but that meant charging not one but _two_ Sigrun Eides, backed by two sniping Lallis and two Emils with their arsenals.

And yet, while the physical battle raged without, two Reynirs sat within the small, cat-shaped vehicle with their eyes closed and waged war in the Otherworld.

In the world that Reynir walked in his “dreams”, the Man in the Black Hat was exposed for what he was: Darkness Incarnate, a shapeless, formless mass that seemed not simply to block out light, but to actually feast upon it, sucking away every last glimmer into its obscene bulk. _This_ was the foe the two Reynirs faced, but they weren’t _quite_ sure how to overcome it.

The twin battles raged on, but while the grosslings could not overcome the dogged defense without, they were doing much better within. The might of their massed multitudes began to tell, and the two Reynirs found their lights waning, for what could only two do against so many?

Except, they weren’t merely two.

Just as another surge of light-sucking ooze washed against the Reynirs’ bubble of radiance, another Reynir joined them, bearing a cutlass. Then another appeared, the Reynir from Year Three, and another, clutching (of all things) a pair of cymbals.

With each new Reynir came a surge of renewed vigor and vitality. Yet another Reynir appeared, dressed for a raid on Napoleon’s Spanish forces, and the sextet was complete, power surging through them as Darkness was met with Light.

_CLASH!_ went the cymbals, and a burst of Light beyond measure poured into the Darkness, which recoiled in pain and perplexity. _CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!_

The Darkness was on the wane now, receding reluctantly against the ever-intensifying Light.

_CLASH!_

Now the six Reynirs surrounded the Man in the Black Hat, who howled in outrage that he should be brought low by such as they. He was literally on his knees now, but still defiant.

_CLASH!_

*

The mass of dead grosslings had made it difficult to locate the Man in the Black Hat’s body, but only the two Reynirs were confident that he’d died until they finally did. The Western Sigrun insisted on checking the body for certain specific marks even then, just to be sure.

Even amidst such carnage, the twelve of them wolfed down the entire morning batch of local Mikkel’s trademark ‘inedible sludge’, not that that kept any of them from complaining about the sludge. After that, it came time for goodbyes.

Having given their local counterparts the last stirring rod for making the Cure (and Lalli-to-Lalli notes on making more like it), the Westerners went back to where they’d debouched from the Cave of Time.

“So,” Sigrun asked Reynir, “is it ‘home again, home again, jiggity jig’ at last?”

“Well,” Reynir replied, “we really should make one more stop along the way...”


	14. A Big Brass Band

Hälsingborg stad, Sweden  
1946

Emil fiddled with his euphonium desultorily. This whole “Swedish-American Friendship Day” was not really his thing, though hearing about the far-off places some of his old neighbors had moved to _was_ rather interesting.

Really, though, the whole thing seemed more an excuse to sell little Swedish and American flags and other bits of kitsch than to actually celebrate Swedish-American friendship, at least to Emil’s way of thinking. He was pretty sure Lalli agreed, though Lalli tended to non-committal noises when asked questions like that.

Of course, that it was such a big commercial deal was why the Musikers were even here, as part of a massed brass band made up of pro musicians from as far afield as Stockholm; thus Emil’s euphonium. The band was part of a parade featuring a group of cowboy types specializing in fancy riding and rope tricks for events like this; it was one of the few aspects of the whole thing Emil was actually looking forward to.

Emil’s idiot Uncle Torbjörn came into view then, looking nervous as he always did when one of his schemes was about to go bust on him. Sighing, Emil set the euphonium aside and went to his hapless relative’s aid.

Oh, dear. Apparently, the trick riders had pulled their best trick on Torbjörn and vanished before their performance. Oddly enough, though, they’d left their horses and gear behind, meaning if they could find riders, the show could go on.

But where could they find six cowboys?

*

Well, a cellar beat the sewers any day, if you were to ask Emil Westbrook, and he was pretty sure the others agreed with him, and especially Lalli Ghost-of-Forest.

They made their way out of the cellar and into a pretty sadly makeshift stable, where six horses were waiting. “Hey, pretties,” Reynir crooned as he watched them. “Now who left you all by your lonesomes?”

Just then, an older version of Emil entered the yard, Torbjörn right behind. After a moment, the other Emil snapped his fingers and said, “You’re the guys that covered for us when we were playing for the Boss that one time!” He threw Torbjörn a dirty look, which was ignored. Torbjörn was too preoccupied with the Westerners’ attire and accoutrements.

“Say, how would you folks like to make some quick cash?” Torbjörn asked, his voice at its most oily. In unison, both Emils rolled their eyes. Reynir snorted as well, startling the rest.

*

The crowds lining the streets cheered and waved wildly as the Band of Six rode proudly down the parade route. Sigrun took it as their due, while the others waved back as best they could while wielding their lassos.

Reynir rather heroically managed to keep from saying “I told you so” even after they were back in the Cave.

As soon as they walked out of the Cave of Time into 1873, the Cave’s mouth collapsed behind them. “Well,” Sigrun observed dryly, “so much for _that_.” And, collecting their horses, they went back to where their wagon awaited them..


End file.
